Screen fonts in Windows are sized and modified by the screen driver. The screen driver can derive normal, bold, italic, and bold italic variations from one screen font.Selecting screen fonts is considerably different from selecting printer fonts. The selection of screen font sizes should not be based upon the selected printer font sizes. It does not make sense to build one corresponding screen font for every printer font for the following reasons:
Screen fonts in Windows are sized and modified by the screen driver. The screen driver can derive normal, bold, italic, and bold italic variations from one screen font.
Screen fonts are selected by way of a generic selection process controlled by the application and the screen driver. One cannot assume that a screen font specifically intended for a printer font will be used to display that font.
Some applications allow the user to see the font at different views (for example, “fit in window,” 100 percent, and 200 percent). A screen font should be provided for each view.
Most important, screen fonts take dynamic memory away from applications, thus slowing the overall performance of Windows.
Poorly selected screen fonts can both slow the performance of the system and produce a confusing screen display.
Regardless of the printer font sizes and variations selected, it is recommended that you load a shortened typographic range of screen fonts:
8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24
Load these fonts in normal face only; the screen driver can simulate bold, italic, and bold italic. There is no need to double, triple, or quadruple the memory used by screen fonts to get these special fonts.
Do not load screen fonts for printer fonts that are like Courier. Windows already provides those screen fonts. Additional screen fonts would use up memory without additional visual benefits.
If you generate one printer font, you should generate the entire recommended range. Applications typically offer more than one view of the page, so the screen driver will need the different sizes to display the font in each view.
If you feel you want the typographic quality of prebuilt bold and italic screen fonts, then you should experiment to see if these fonts look better than fonts synthesized by the screen driver. Display a page of text with only the normal face loaded, then display it with the normal, bold, and italic faces loaded.
Never load a bold or italic screen font without a corresponding normal face font. Without the normal face, the screen driver will always use the bold or italic face, producing a confusing screen display.
For example, suppose you decide to create a document that uses a 24-point italic font. You then load one printer and one screen font as 24-point italic. Thereafter, every time the screen driver determines it needs a 24-point screen font that is similar to the font that you installed, it will use the 24-point italic face. Regardless of the variation you want (that is, normal, bold, or italic), the font will display in italic.
As you add more fonts to your computer, the situation will become more confusing. To continue the example, suppose you decide to add the same printer and screen font as 48-point normal.
When the application displays the 48-point font at 100 percent view on the screen, the font will display as 48-point normal (that is, the correct behavior). At 50 percent view, the font will display as 24-point italic (because that is the only font available). When switching views, therefore, the font changes from normal to italic.
You can avoid this problem simply by not loading anything other than the normal face of the screen font. Normally, the difference between the synthesized font and the “true” font is barely noticeable, if noticeable at all. If you must load the italic or bold variations, then you must also load the normal variation in the same size.